Monitoring and Environmental Assessment

In one line

Five articles require the rich to help the poor build the capacity to protect the sea, and then require every State to watch what it is doing and to assess before it does it.

In exam wording: articles 202 to 206 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982 require States to promote programmes of scientific, educational, technical and other assistance to developing States for the protection and preservation of the marine environment; to grant them preference in the allocation of appropriate funds and technical assistance and in the utilisation of specialised services; to observe, measure, evaluate and analyse the risks or effects of pollution and to publish reports; and, where they have reasonable grounds for believing that planned activities may cause substantial pollution or significant and harmful changes to the marine environment, to assess the potential effects and communicate reports of the results.

The provisions

Article 202: scientific and technical assistance to developing States. States shall, directly or through competent international organisations:

• (a) promote programmes of scientific, educational, technical and other assistance to developing States for the protection and preservation of the marine environment and the prevention, reduction and control of marine pollution, which assistance shall include training of scientific and technical personnel, facilitating their participation in relevant international programmes, supplying them with necessary equipment and facilities, enhancing their capacity to manufacture such equipment, and advice on and developing facilities for research, monitoring, educational and other programmes;
• (b) provide appropriate assistance, especially to developing States, for the minimisation of the effects of major incidents which may cause serious pollution of the marine environment; and
• (c) provide appropriate assistance, especially to developing States, concerning the preparation of environmental assessments.

Article 203: preferential treatment for developing States. Developing States shall, for the purposes of prevention, reduction and control of pollution of the marine environment or minimisation of its effects, be granted preference by international organisations in the allocation of appropriate funds and technical assistance, and in the utilisation of their specialised services.

Those two articles are the Convention's version of common but differentiated responsibilities, and they were negotiated a decade before the phrase existed.

Article 204: monitoring of the risks or effects of pollution.

Paragraph 1: States shall, consistent with the rights of other States, endeavour, as far as practicable, directly or through the competent international organisations, to observe, measure, evaluate and analyse, by recognised scientific methods, the risks or effects of pollution of the marine environment.

Paragraph 2: in particular, States shall keep under surveillance the effects of any activities which they permit or in which they engage in order to determine whether these activities are likely to pollute the marine environment.